[Canadian_Mind]

Why must we always compare ourselves to the Americans? I'd like to know where we're the best against everybody, not one specific group.

[fifeboy]

bootlegga bootlegga:

With a little luck and some smart leadership, hopefully we'll avoid the same fate.

Then we are screwed!

[JaredMilne]

One thing I've consistently noted is how Canadians as a people tend to punch way above our weight in general influence on and contributions to the world than most of us realize:

In World War I, we made the Germans scared of us. In World War II, we were standing equally with the British and the Americans on D-Day, even as we contributed extensively to humanitarian efforts after the war. In every conflict we've fought in, our accomplishments have stood out well out of proportion to our actual population size.

We've contributed to popular culture for decades, from the likes of Mary Pickford and Louis Mayer back in the early days of Hollywood to the likes of James Cameron, Leslie Nielsen and Jim Carrey today, in addition to musicians like Neil Young and the Arcade Fire, novelists like Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel, athletes like Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux or performances like Cirque du Soleil. How many talented people have found success south of the border, even though they were born here? Once again, a disproportionate number seem to be Canadian-Red Green, of all people, has been one of PBS's biggest fundraisers for years.

Canadians helped fight against apartheid, John Diefenbaker doing it long before it was trendy and Brian Mulroney playing an important supporting role in its eventual downfall. Terry Fox's memory raises millions every year for cancer research. Our inventions include insulin, the electron microscope, the snowmobile and the combine harvester. Canada has been a refuge for everyone from British Loyalists to Irish immigrants in the 19th century to refugees from places like Iraq, Rwanda and Somalia today.

And all this is just what I can recall off the top of my head-there are plenty of other contributions out there that I've come across in publications like The Beaver. It's surprising how many innovations, and the people behind them, have been shown to be Canadian. To me, it's a sign of a very important but overlooked element of what it means to be Canadian, making a tremendous positive impact on the world, often without fully realizing it ourselves, to the point that other peoples and cultures see it more than we see it about ourselves. We often see ourselves as reserved, second-rate compared to other, more powerful societies and otherwise more timid, but other peoples often admire us for what they see as our tolerance and our ability to get along with each other, as well as the efforts we've made on their behalf in circumstances like World War II. The reality is much more complex than that, of course, but the fact remains is that how we're often seen by the rest of the world.

What's the point of insulting our southern neighbours? We have so much to be proud of, so much to celebrate, that defines us as Canadians in a positive way, much more so than simply saying we're not Americans.

[Jabberwalker]

What's the point of insulting our southern neighbours?

To even question that the Americans may not the best at everything, every time, always and have always been so qualifies as anti-Americanism.

It's like questioning the Israelis when they're stomping the shit out of one of their neighbours ... even the smallest negative peep about the latest blitzkrieg is flagrant anti-Semitism and if you question what the Israelis are doing at all, you are essentially Adolph Eichmann, himself.

[JaredMilne]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

To even question that the Americans may not the best at everything, every time, always and have always been so qualifies as anti-Americanism.

It's like questioning the Israelis when they're stomping the shit out of one of their neighbours ... even the smallest negative peep about the latest blitzkrieg is flagrant anti-Semitism and if you question what the Israelis are doing at all, you are essentially Adolph Eichmann, himself.

There's a difference between preferring certain elements of Canadian society to America's (such as my personal preference for having two official languages and more of a balance between government action and individual initiative in Canada to America's "melting pot" tendencies and greater libertarian tendencies) and former Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish talking about the "damn Americans" and how much she "hated those bastards".

Perhaps I could have phrased it better when I asked rhetorically what the point of insulting our neighbours is, but my point is that we can and should be finding more positive ways to define ourselves as Canadians beyond just stating that we're not America. Even Mel Hurtig, who is so often bashed as an anti-American, specifically commented on the Americans' energy, industriousness and innovation in The Vanishing Country: Is It Too Late To Save Canada?. Red Green summed it up nicely when he expressed in one episode how glad he was that the Americans were watching his show, but he said that it would not make him change his tune, which happens to be "O Canada".

All that aside, you do have a point when some people use the "anti-American" slur to attack anyone who criticizes anything the U.S. does, and how similar tactics are used in all kinds of other situations. I hate this as much as anyone-one reason I'm always leery of expressing my concerns about certain elements of NAFTA is the worry that I'll end up being smeared as a closet Marxist who hates trade and markets, never mind that one of my personal beliefs is that Marxism just plan doesn't work...

[Sunnyways]

Canada is indeed a great country. Now let’s talk about ‘opportunities for improvement’ and make a similar list. I’ll start:

1. Telecom. The cost of keeping a cellphone going is insane here. In otherwise absurdly pricey places like Ireland you can get a no contract deal for 30 euro a month. And don’t get me started on trying to call Bell with problems. If this is what Cancon means in telecom we need a whole lot less of it. The Thomson and Rogers families have been indulged long enough.

2. Healthcare. Yes, we’re better than the Yanks but that’s a low, low bar to clear. On many key indicators we are behind the likes of Australia, a country with similar geographic challenges. Finding a GP is becoming very difficult in the outback. A mixed model of public and private care is inevitable but we refuse to face reality and suffer needless harm as a result.

3. Constitutional change. Have we just given up altogether on this? We need new mechanisms to evolve with the times that are not paralyzed by disputes between the provinces. Once QEII goes there will be serious pressure for reform.

4. Property prices. On a deserted semi-continent we have managed to make property unaffordable in our two ‘hottest’ cities while governments have twiddled their thumbs.

[herbie]

1. No shit and say that double!
2. So the Doctor can tell you on video to suck the venom out of your own toe out there in the boonies is no great advance either. We need financial incentives for remote medical workers, and more people in those areas.
3. Fuck it, that shit is last priority
4. If someone's fool enough to pay $1M for my house, I'm bone stupid not to take it. And as Covid proved if you can work from home, home doesn't have to be a 600 sq ft flat downtown it can be a remote island if they'd fix issue #1. Which would also fix #2

[Thanos]

I thought after last year's revelations about the probable death toll at the residential schools we'd all quietly committed to not being so boastful and "yay Canada!" all the time. Living north of the 49th doesn't confer anything special on us. We're really no different at all from anyone else on this tragic planet.

[herbie]

We might have been there while they still existed, but none of us were involved in making that happen. It would be like the Queen apologizing for British colonialism when since before her reign even started, they were freeing all the colonies...
Besides, after 2 years of no celebrations we did our moping, regrets & soul searching. Let's start fixing things and building again.

[Thanos]

I don't know anymore. I now find all nationalism to be something only genuine scoundrels applaud. And nationalism's weaker cousin, patriotism, to be so insincere as to be effectively meaningless. Most countries find basic decency nearly impossible to achieve, yet at the same time all of them engage in non-stop shouting about their alleged "greatness". To me the need to achieve some sort of completely mythical specialness is as ridiculous for a country to obsess over as it is for an individual. It's all just performative narcissism at it's roots.

Any country is only as good as the people who live in it are. Most people aren't evil and rotten. Then again most people are nowhere near as good and special as they've convinced themselves they are either. Back-slapping ourselves over what previous generations, especially the one from World War Two, accomplished is genuinely repugnant too. Even more so in light of the knowledge that very few members of the three most recent generations have ever shown possess even the slightest bit of the courage & stamina that the Greatest Generation had.

[herbie]

Patriotism's like Christianity - the ones that talk and boast the loudest about theirs are the least and the worst. Nobody cares about striving for 'greatness' we wave a flag on July 1st cheer out teams, wave at the Queen, grumble when the Yanks buy out another company and go on with life.